


The stuff dreams are made of

by armethaumaturgy



Category: Elsword (Video Game)
Genre: Dreams, Fluff, if you squint you might see a triadd, unreality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-21
Updated: 2016-01-21
Packaged: 2018-05-15 08:42:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5779132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/armethaumaturgy/pseuds/armethaumaturgy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He shouldn't have mentioned Time and Arc's bad sleeping patterns in the first place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The stuff dreams are made of

Psych is unsurprisingly critical when he's handed a small pouch by Helen. She smiles at him and tells him that it's fine (and that there are no negative side effects), but somehow, with Glave in the background watching them with his hawk-like eye, Psych is remotely concerned.

He shouldn't have mentioned Time and Arc's bad sleeping patterns in the first place. Helen has a strange power to make him say what's on his mind, though, no matter if he wants to or not. 

He pockets the pouch into his jacket and zips it up to keep it safe, nevertheless.

How bad can it be? Glave won't be there to laugh if it's laced, and Helen isn't the one to play cruel pranks in the first place. After a brief internal debate, Psych arrives to the conclusion that it's not going to kill them.

Probably.

 

* * *

He volunteers to make the coffee, since both Arc and Time have their noses buried in books that they swapped earlier that afternoon. He leaves them and their hushed whispers on the couch and sets the kettle onto the fire.

He prepares the coffee and sugar and, peeking back at the two of them, slyly pulls the pouch out of his pocket. He sprinkles a little of the powder into each of the mugs -  _ hey, on the off chance that it's poisoned, we'll be poisoned all together _ , he thinks.  _ That’s only fair. _

He takes the kettle off the fire before its sound could become irritating and pours the water into the mugs. The sweet aroma of coffee rises almost immediately and fills the kitchen. He was fearing the powder would smell, but it doesn’t, thankfully. Psych takes the mugs to the other tracers and returns to get his own.

Time smiles at him with a ‘Thanks,’ while Arc mutters a quiet ‘Thank you.’ Psych settles on the couch again and, as is the tradition, they stop doing whatever it is they’re doing and sit back to drink their coffee in peace.

The quiet atmosphere is nice; Psych drinks it in along with his coffee, since it’s so unusual for the lab to be silent. He’s slightly surprised, but in the good sense, when he doesn’t taste any traces of the powder in his beverage. The others don’t either, at least by their relaxed looks.

He isn’t sure when he starts dozing off, but no hot water spilling all over himself wakes him up, so he probably already finished his mug. That’s the last coherent thought he has before falling asleep, sliding down the couch a little.

 

* * *

He's weightless. It's not the same weightlessness he feels when he rides his Dynamos, this is a true feeling of floating. Psych opens his eyes and blinks a few times to make sure he has really opened them.

All he sees is black, endlessly stretching as far as he can see and wrapping around him like a blanket. He looks down, but there is no floor, just more darkness.

He reaches out tentatively, but he feels nothing. Nothing tangible, at least. It's like he's grasping through fog, like he knows there's something there but he can't see it.

His feet kick uselessly, trying to gain purchase on something, but there  _ is  _ nothing to gain purchase on. It's almost like he is swimming, but he's not. He's floating, suspended in this… fog, for the lack of a better word.

When he realizes that, he tries balancing himself like he would in water. He breaks through the fog with his hands, weaving it like waves of water and essentially standing up.

He tries looking around for something, anything, in the sea of dark. His vision starts going colorful, the lack of light playing tricks on his mind. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he spots it.

A light.

At first he thinks it's just another thing conjured up by his mind, but the more he stares at it, a small light dot huddled by his left foot, the bigger and brighter it gets.

It grows to the size of his palm, shining brightly and illuminating his figure. He maneuvers to get closer to it and cups it with both hands.

_ Warm _ , Psych thinks immediately. The light isn't really tangible, but he can still feel it weighting on his palm. He stares into it intently until his eyes hurt and there is a shape of it burned into his retinas.

He blinks, and the light starting rising from his palm, up into the dark. His eyes follow its path as it settles somewhere a bit away from him. It looks like a star, shimmering faintly.

Another light pops up; Psych whirs around to watch it, extend his hand again, but this one doesn't come into his palms, it just goes straight into the darkness right away. It takes a spot somewhere on the other side, twinkling at him as if winking.

Another one, and another one pops up, flying around and leaving behind small, shimmering trails as they find their places in the void. A few moments later, the whole space around him is filled with tiny lights.

_ It's a sky _ , he realises.

He reaches out to a light, curls his fingers around it and feels its warmth. The light flares and dims, and he lets it go.

The small stars around him move again, floating together to form a big rectangle, shining and bright. The rectangle sets over his bare shoulders, falling around him softly as if it, too, didn't weight anything. It's warm and soft and wraps around him as if it knew every contour of his body.

The starry blanket feels like the fog did when Psych places a hand over it; like it is and isn't there at the same time.

Wrapped up in the soft warmth and comforting feeling of stars, Psych's eyes close and he loses himself in the unbelievable feeling.

* * *

When Arc opens his eyes, he only sees white. He's laying facedown on some white surface, but it is neither warm or cold, it just…  _ is _ .

He runs his fingers along it, feeling the unbroken, perfectly smooth texture. He slowly sits up, brushing his disheveled hair out of his face. The thing he’s sitting on seems to be a white rectangle. There are countless of them, spanning left and right — he takes notice as he looks around.

He stands up to get a better look. There’s a row of white recrangles, identical in shape and size, going as far as the eye can see. Their neat line is only broken by smaller, black rectangles sitting between some of them.

Black, black, none, black, black, black, none.

The pattern continues on and on, until he can’t see that far anymore. The space around the rectangles in dark, so dark he can’t see anything. He peers over the edge of the rectangle he stands on, but only sees the void gaping at him.

Not wanting to think what would happen if he fell down, Arc decides to follow the path made out of the rectangles. He chooses the direction at random, since there is nothing indicating one is more likely to lead anywhere, and he hops over the tiny gap between the rectangles.

His shoes thud softly on the polished white surface. Except… It isn't white anymore. Arc looks down in surprise to see the white rectangle glowing a faint red underneath his soles. A soft tone echoes from somewhere along with the light. It almost feels as if the light itself carried the tone.

And somewhere from far away comes a melody, a few tones that match up with the one still coming from the rectangle. He looks around in search of its source, but, seeing nothing but the unending darkness, Arc focuses on what he sees again.

Experimentally, he jumps a little. The tone ends and the light fades. When he lands back on the rectangle, both start up again.

_ It's really a piano _ , he thinks, transfixed as the melody comes echoing again.

He jumps to another rectangle, this one lighting up an orange hue and its tone an octave higher. Another melody comes from the void to accompany the lone, drawn-out tone.

It's a slow melody, a soothing tune that would befit a lullaby. Arc steps to the next key, trying to keep the melody going. It lights up yellow and the melody continues on for a few moments longer. The sound of it is quiet enough that he'd normally have to strain his ears to hear it, but since there is nothing else but the sound of his shoes on the keys and the rustling of his clothes, he can hear it clear as day.

It is familiar, but he can't quite place it.

He steps to the next key, and the next one, and the next one, to the tune of the song. He hums along with it, the sounds merging into a pleasant cacophony that keeps reminding him of home.

Feet hitting the surface of a blue key, he stops halfway through a hum. The melody keeps playing, the key he's standing on drawing it out, high-pitched and loud.

The melody's familiarity finally clicks inside Arc's brain. Instead of humming, he starts singing the words quietly. They roll off his tongue as if he'd sung them a billion times already. Maybe he has, he isn't sure.

It's mother's lullaby.

He hops to the next key and keeps skipping across them, sometimes stomping onto the keys to make them ring out louder.

He goes on, lighting up the world with the colors of the rainbow, until his voice fades out and the light is no longer visible from where he had started.

Still, Arc keeps going, a smile painted across his face.

* * *

Time opens his eyes with a start as his back hits the surface of water. Immediately, he goes plunging under.

He gasps for breath, eyes widening. He's even more surprised when he doesn't start drowning. Instead, he breathes in the lukewarm water like it is air. Pressing a hand against his throat, he slowly calms down. 

Small bursts of bubbles leave his lips with each breath.

He keeps sinking into the bottomless abyss of the water slowly. He rights himself to stop and waves his hands around to keep himself stable.

The water fills his sleeves and makes them look too big as they wave around. He keeps noticing details like that; like the fact that his eyepatch is gone and that his hair looks strangely purple as it swishes in front of his eyes.

The water around him looks dark, but only at the bottom. Above him, it disperses with soft and warm light, the bubbles that keep rising from his lips shining in it.

Time brushes the strands of hair from his face and starts slowly swimming back up. The water makes way for him, making the swim easy and strainless. Like it's carving a way for him.

He isn't sure how long it takes him, but he's pretty sure it's longer than he'd been falling. The water's murkiness slowly changes into crystal clearness as he goes, the light getting warmer and warmer.

He breaks the surface and takes in a huge gulp of real air. The air is warm, a striking contrast to the lukewarmness of the water. The sun rays beat down on him, drying his hair already.

All around him, the water spreads endlessly, the surface soft blue with orange and purple hues where the light hits under a certain angle. It seems to sparkle faintly.

Experimentally, Time dunks his head back underwater and breathes in the water. There is no difference between it and the air, aside from the fact that under the surface, he breathes out pretty bubbles.

He looks to the sky, where a brilliantly burgundy sun sits on a background of almost white. The sight is beautiful, and he can't help but stare for a few long minutes. Minutes? Maybe it's hours, he doesn't know.

"Where am I?" he mutters to no one in particular.

_ Where do you want to be, Time? _

A voice, similar to his but much, much softer and higher pitched and kinder, says that. Time looks around, but there is no one and nothing around, just the water surface with softly spreading circles from where he floats. The voice sounds like it's echoing from within himself.

"Where do I want to be?" he repeats quietly, like he's looking for the answer from the voice that asked instead.

_ Yes, what do you want, Time? _

"I want to be home," he answers without hesitation, like the words were always sitting on the tip of his tongue.

_ Then open your eyes, Time. _

Time opens his mouth to voice a question — What do you mean? My eyes are already open. — but the water pulls him back beneath the surface.

Instead of opening his eyes, Time closes them. As he sinks again, he enjoys the warmth of the sun and its orange hue on the backs of his eyelids.

He sinks into slumber.

 

* * *

 

Psych stirs, opening his eyes a crack. He blinks against the soft light coming from the kitchen window. Though it’s soft, it still makes his eyes sting.

What a weird dream.

His brain and the rest of his body slowly wake up as well. He realizes there’s something weighting down on his shoulder and his thighs. There’s also something pressing against his lower back rather painfully.

He looks to the left to see Time curled up against him, head nestled against his upper arm. He catches the other tracer’s eye — Time looks like he’s still dreamy, his gaze cloudy and distant, but it focuses on him and he almost jumps — before Time looks away, a faint shade of pink spreading across his pale cheeks.

The thing weighting down on his thighs is Arc, spread on his back across both his and Time’s laps. He’s still sleeping, his breathing slow and leveled.

Then the thing pressing against his back is… As carefully as he can, to not jostle Arc, he arches his back and pulls the empty mug from behind himself. It’s a mystery to him how it got there in the first place.

He remembers… drinking the coffee, not even finishing it. The stuff Helen gave him must really have worked then, because he can’t remember a single thing. And, judging my the way they’re all so close and were sleeping — presumably, anyway — it must’ve worked on Arc and Time as well.

Psych grins to himself secretly as he puts the mug onto the table. Time turns, pressing his back against his side instead, and turns on one holo-screen. Even with its light as he taps away, Psych can tell he’s still blushing. Instead of addressing it, he tangles a hand in Arc’s hair and cards his fingers through it softly.

He glances at the kitchen counter, where the small pouch still sits innocently, right next to the container with coffee, and he smiles secretly again.

No more sleep-deprived tracers.


End file.
